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cases he investigates; why else would presidents fear the electoral consequences of shrinking from war? This blaming of political and policy elites and exoneration of ‘the people’ strikes a familiar note in our current age of populism, but perhaps it is too kind to ‘the people’. A fuller exploration of the relationship between society, culture and war in the United States would get to the heart of the question this book poses but does not answer: why does America not learn from its ‘needless wars’, and why does it keep starting new ones? The answer would be hard to hear, but it would be instructive for this book’s readers. It might even produce yet more ‘disappointed idealists’.